"I don't need to."
(Hit. Deft and killing as Duun's wit when he was crossed.) Thorn flinched inside. "Forgive me, Sagot. Sagot, don't hate me."
"Wicked boy. By guile and redirection. I can tell you're Duun's handiwork. Back to the meds, are we?"
"Just don't tell me they don't. I can read bodies; I can read eyes, Sagot. They hate me and they're afraid of me and they made me what I am. Is that reasonable of them?"
"Maybe it's the hatani they're afraid of. Did you think of that? People don't like being read. A hatani stops at your door, you give that hatani food, a place to sleep, and you start thinking over every move you make because you know you're being read, constantly, every tiny move. It would take a very stupid person or a very innocent one to relax with a hatani under his roof."
"A hatani doesn't judge if he's not asked to. Sometimes not even then. Why should they worry?"
"Guilt. Everyone's guilty of something. A hatani makes you know what you're guilty of."
"Even hatani are guilty, Sagot."
"But they cover it. They know how not to be read, don't they? If they really try. Sometimes they don't." Sagot got up and came and sat down next to him, put her arm around him. "Sometimes they don't want to, do they? Come on, lean on me, I won't tell anyone."
"Tell me about the test, Sagot."
"Wicked lad." Her hand pressed his shoulder, close to his neck, and made him nervous. He shrugged and she slipped it to the middle of his back. "You have a hatani mind, all right. You're growing up."
"I hear words, Sagot, sounds run in my head and I hear words in them."
"What do they say, these words?"
"They tell me hello, they want something, I can't tell what, they talk about the sun and the earth, they talk about math and chemistry, oxygen, they say, and carbon, over and over, and they talk nonsense, the elements, the reactions inside the sun, the lifecycle of stars-"
Sagot's arm had gone tense. He turned and looked at her at close range, saw her eyes dilate and contract. "Did I just scare you?" Thorn asked.
"Go on talking."
"I'm not supposed to talk to you about it. You keep telling me that."
"You can tell me about this. Go on."
"There isn't anything more. I can't remember anything else. I see that desert place and a place like a space station, I see the earth in space with the sun coming up, and faces-faces like mine, I see the space station full of them, I see people like me coming and going and talking to each other-sometimes they're mad, and I can read them if I can't figure out what they're saying, one wants something and she's a woman-Duun says I imagine it, but I'd never imagine a thing like that, her mouth is all red and her hair is long and her eyes are all painted round the edges: she wants something very bad and she's angry with a man but he's sorry and they go on meeting in this place, these places where people eat and have clothes, clothes for people with no hair, and she's shaped like-" He shaped the image of fullness of his chest. (White all white, and large and strange-looking.) "And finally-there are a lot of people that come and go-she goes off with this other man and they go into his bedroom and they love each other, but it isn't love, she doesn't even like him, and he's mad about that, maybe about something else; then she leaves and she goes and finds the first man but he's about to go somewhere and he doesn't want to talk to her. Her eyes run. He goes away. She goes to this place where people eat and she's very unhappy. Then he walks through the door and he comes over to sit with her, but not on ordinary furniture, on these legged things, all the furniture's like that. She's pretending she's not glad to see him, she keeps eating. He knows she's pretending and he says something and they look at each other and say something about going somewhere, and then it stops and I don't know where they went."
Sagot took his face between her hands and he was so lost he let her. She pulled his face down to her level and washed his eyes with her tongue, which made him feel strange and loved, even as old as Sagot was. "Is that what I'm supposed to see?" She let him go. "Go home. I'll call Ogot." "What am I supposed to see? Is it over? Am I through with that?"
"I don't know. Go home."
XII
Ellud paced the floor and flung his arms out: "I can't cover this!"
"You don't have to." Duun stayed seated. "I'm taking him this afternoon. I'll want the copter on the roof, I'll want the plane at Trusa, no slip-ups; take one off the line. I'll take it myself."
"Gods, your license is expired. I won't have it. You don't fly these damn things nowadays, the damn computers do. I'll get you a pilot." Ellud threw that out and lost his case.
"Do that. One hour. I'm headed out." Duun went for the door.
"They'll have my post, they'll move the minute you're clear of the roof, I'll have councillors at this door."
"Watch Shbit, that's all. I'll get him back for you."
"The Guild won't take him!"
"Is that hope they will or hope they won't?"
Ellud stood there with his mouth open. Duun left.
Thorn hurried; he had a bundle under his arm that was a change of clothes, his and Duun's and Duun's gray cloak, wrapped around things they needed from the bath and tied with a cord; he had new winter-clothes on, quilted coat, baggy trousers, quilted boots: so did Duun, striding along beside him to the elevator.
"Where are we going, Duun?" Half protest and half question, third time posed. (Have I broken some rule, have I made Duun mad?) But he could not read Duun now, except that there were secrets and Duun was in a great hurry to get him out-(Outside?) He had not worn pants and coat since Sheon, in the coldest weather. Had never worn boots. It was only the beginning of fall.)
(He knows what I told Sagot. I've done something wrong! We're running again, like we ran from Sheon-men with guns, people are hunting us- But that's crazy. They wouldn't. I haven't talked to anyone I shouldn't, I haven't done anything-)
(Have I?)
The elevator door opened. Duun went through last and used a card to operate it. The elevator shot up and up, past all the floors between them and the roof.
The door whisked open in the cupola. Beyond the windows was true sky, gray cloud, a copter with its blades turning. Guards were waiting there to open the door for them and the wind skirled in with bitter chill. "Head down!" Duun yelled at him and ran, ducking low when he got near the copter. Thorn remembered that, ran, with the wind of the blades burning his face. He kept low until he reached the copter, and clambered in like Duun did, as fast as he could, flung himself into the seat and started fastening straps. (Like the simulator. But this isn't. This is real.) The copter upped power and surged upward with a vengeance. The tops of Dsonan's tall buildings spun dizzily into view, the deep chasms of rail-courses and maintenance-ways, the distant port with the gray light shining off the water beneath a smear of clouds.
"We're going to the airport," Duun told him, shouting in his ear. "We've got a plane waiting for us."
Thorn looked at Duun with question available to be read. Pleading.
"We're going up to Avenen," Duun shouted at him. "The Guild headquarters. You'd better settle your mind on this trip, minnow. As many hatani as they can muster are going to be coming in there and you're going to have to do it this time or not at all. There won't be a second chance."
"For what?"
"To get you Guild protection, that's what."
They ran from the copter to a building and shed their quilted winter gear for suits that hugged the body. Attendants impersonal as the meds worked at fastenings, jerking at them, two at a time, rough in their frantic haste: masks next, that dangled about their necks, and helmets with a microphone inside. "Run," Duun said then, bending to snatch up the baggage, and they ran, out the door attendants held open for them, into a thunderous noisy building open at either end, where a plane sat with its fans at idle, a dip-nosed machine with stubby backswept wings. "This thing uses a runway," Duun yelled over the noise. "We're going to roll out from here-go round behind the wing, there's a ladder."